Making space for grief: What losing my grandmother taught me

There were no dramatic collapses, just a humble reshaping of my world – inside and out.

The many ways grief lives inside us

One of the most misunderstood things about grief is how narrowly we define it. Usually, we expect it to look like crying, withdrawal, or outwardly visible sorrow. But grief is far more subtle – and to be honest, far more personal. Sometimes it shows up as reflection. Sometimes as tenderness. Sometimes as an unfamiliar tiredness that isn’t physical, but emotional – the kind that comes from carrying love and loss at the same time.

I instinctively reached for the phone before remembering I no longer could – like when I’d want to share something I wrote and knew she’d love reading it. (Generated using AI)

Grief, I’ve learned, can live beneath productivity, routine, and normalcy (lest we forget, for me this happened in January – a month otherwise filled with momentum and the madness that comes with the start of a new year!). It doesn’t necessarily disrupt life; often, it coexists with it. Precisely because it doesn’t always demand attention, we are tempted to ignore grief – to move on quickly, to return to pace, to treat loss as something to process efficiently rather than something to live with honestly.
What made grief difficult for me, like for many others, was not its presence, but my original instinct to rush past it.

Allowing grief to take up space

The most important decision I made was a simple one: not to hurry. I let it take up space – through personal reflection, unstructured writing, and moments of stillness that didn’t need justification.
And something unexpected happened.

Alongside grief came creativity. An urge to write, to read, to think more deeply about life, continuity, and the spiritual journey of the soul. Grief didn’t diminish me. It softened me. It slowed me into a deeper relationship with what mattered.

When grief is bypassed or minimised, creativity often disappears with it. But when grief is given breathing room, creativity returns. Grief, when given space, can be transformed for growth.

Grief is not a problem to solve

We are conditioned to treat grief as something that must be processed quickly – through stages, timelines, or explanations. But neither is grief linear nor efficient. It unfolds in layers and revisits us in unexpected ways. And, in my experience, it does not respond well to pressure.

Grief is not only about loss. It is also about transition – about learning how to relate to memory, love, and life itself after something irreversible has occurred.

Making space for grief means allowing our inner world to be honest, even though it may feel inconvenient or uncomfortable. It means accepting that some seasons call for clarity, and others for gentleness.

What helped me stay with the process

When grief felt too vast to articulate, I turned to some reading. Journey of Souls by Dr. Michael Newton offered a wider lens on life, death, and continuity. It didn’t take the grief away, but it softened the fear around it – inviting a gentler understanding of transition rather than finality. It was a profound experience.

Life After Death by Deepak Chopra helped me sit with uncertainty without rushing toward explanation. It framed grief as part of a deeper spiritual rhythm that moves at its own pace.

I also returned to the Bhagavad Gita, particularly in the translation by Swami Mukundananda. Its reflections on impermanence, duty, love, and detachment felt quite reassuring – reminding me that grief has always been part of the human condition, and that meeting it with awareness is its own form of wisdom.

Through none of these texts did I attempt to resolve grief. They simply helped me hold it with more steadiness.

Carrying love forward

I am still grieving my grandmother. But I am also learning that grief is not the absence of love – it is love finding a new form, and that is reassuring.

We do not need to rush healing or demand closure. In a case like this, the most respectful thing we can do for ourselves is to acknowledge what we are carrying and let it move at its own pace.
Grief, when met with patience, only deepens us.

Questions to sit with

I often end my reflections with questions, as I will this one because I believe reflections create space.
If it feels supportive, you might sit with these:

• What am I grieving right now – consciously or unconsciously?
• What would it look like to give that grief space, rather than trying to move past it?
• What might this loss be shaping within me?

The idea is not for you to arrive at a point of clarity or closure to engage with these questions. It’s about allowing them to exist. This can be the sacred space where the real work begins.

(The writer is a US-based ICF-certified life coach and founder of The Miracle Trail, where she helps women who feel stuck, burnt out or directionless find more clarity, alignment, and purpose. She can be reached at mihika@themiracletrail.com.)